France and USA Dominate the Top Spots: The Race Is On

Good Snow and excellent weather in Whistler made race winners like Mark Fawcett and Sondra Van Ert have more to smile about than just their wins this last week at the only FIS Worldcup taking place in North America this fall. Thursday the super G got underway early in the day with a course that was described by Mark Fawcett as one that was “set to the extreme limit of openess.” In non-racer terminology, it was fast.

The first day’s super G was a close one in the men’s division with Nicolas Conte riding hard against Fawcett for the top spot, while Canadian Jasey Jay Anderson took third place. This is the first FIS contest Anderson and Fawcett competed in this season because they both chose to train all fall in North America instead of venturing over to Europe for the FIS contests that took place over the last few months. The lack of competition this season obviously didn’t affect either Canadians’ performance, and perhaps even improved it as they proved over the last few days with their results.

In the women’s division the American women were charging hard in the Super G taking three of the top five spots. “It was a really fun race,” said fifth place racer Leslee Olson. “I could’ve gone faster though,” she said about her performance in the Super G. She tried to prove this the following day in the GS, but unfortunately fell and was DQ’d.

The GS was all about France on Friday as Nicolas Conte and Karine Ruby walked away into the sunshining day with first place. Once again Betsy Shaw came in strong and took second place, losing to Ruby by a few seconds and Sondra Van Ert pushed hard for a top spot, but like Olson, also blew out. Isabelle Blanc, also from France, took third place after having a combined time with a bit over a second slower than Betsy Shaw.

In the men’s division Mark Fawcett once again came in strong, but didn’t quite pull it off getting third place behind France’s Nicolas Conte and Italy’s Thomas Prugger. America’s Chris Klug came in at a solid fourth place and Mike Jacoby, also from the USA, took fifth place at less than .3 of a second behind Klug.